Sorry [mention]Pinchons[/mention] . I got called out to a couple of urgent jobs that took ages and am in middle of moving computer so typing this on phone and I'll be stuck for another couple of days. Hopefully you have everything under control though. Don't worry abot starter, just pitch what you have

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I'm back on board now [mention]Pinchons[/mention] . I'm working from an old laptop at the moment but it is enough for me to be able to answer any questions you have. While I am a little tight on time atm, I know I have missed some of your questions so don't be scared to re-post them if they still concern you. On questions like the starter, don't hesitate to start a new thread as that will enable others to see your question that they would otherwise miss.

One thing I will type in now though is that you mentioned going for dilutions one week and sparging the next. Study hard "The Sweet Liquor Shop" posts. Also, be aware that, unless you brew batches "side by side" on the same day, it is very hard to compare batches. The water used on day one can be very different from that used on day 7 in some places (especially here in Perth). You also have a time difference. A "hoppy" beer can change in taste from one week to the next.

There's also other little things you'll forget unless you brew side by side (temperature variations etc). There are bigger and easier experiments to do. For example, here we did a few brews and force carbonated some and naturally carbonated (used a priming sugar) the others. They resulted in two different beers and it's not the first time I've done that.

So, keep things simple and easy and try not to do side by side brews unless you do them simultaneously.

PP

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Thanks a lot for the tip! I´ll wait until we brew again to keep firing you up with further questions.

What suprprises me from the recipe we chose is the adding water during the boiling. Is this a normal procedure? Do people normally do this? What major differences do you think that will be in the outcoming beer between sparging XX l of water or adding it to the boiling phase?

Sorry for the slow reply [mention]Pinchons[/mention] . I'm usually better than this. I'm stuck on a small computer so I can't give as much detail as I usually would. Even scrolling takes forever!

Now, I know I did write recently about the "Sweet Liquor Shops." If you search my posts for that phrase, you'll get some links to the answer you are looking for. It's afew posts above so study that.

But, let's also look at it a different way.

Before we get to tea...

Sparging is not a normal practice in SVAG brewing (Single-Vessel All-Grain - e.g. pure BIAB). It is normal practice in MVAG brewing (Multi-Vessel All-Grain Brewing such as batch or fly-sparging methods). If your kettle is too small to do SVAG brewing, you are forced to compromise on something - labour, ingredients and/or time. This is dealt with in the Sweet Liquor Shop posts.

Let's think on tea

Let's say you are making a cup of tea with a tea bag. Do you fill half-fill one mug with hot water, soak your tea bag in that, then take the tea bag out and add it to a second mug half-full of hot water, then dump the tea bag and then pour the contents from one mug to the other to make a full cup of tea?

No, you don't. That would be stupid.

What about if you wanted really strong tea? Say, four tea bags to a cup?

You can put all four tea bags into one mug and fill it with hot water. When you pull the tea bags out, the mug will not be quite full. You now have two choices: top the mug up with a little water or add some water to a second mug, dump the four tea bags in that and then drain the tea from that back into the first mug. You'll get a little bit more value from your tea bags but it has cost you time, labour and some calculations.

Brewing is a bit like tea bags

An average brew is a bit like using say three tea bags. You would never notice the volume loss is a mug using one tea bag but with three you might see a bit as those tea bags absorb liquid that you never see again.

If you were using five tea bags (a strong brew with say an Original Gravity of 1.080) maybe, maybe, maybe???, you might think about using a second mug (vessel) to get a bit more out of those tea bags and fill the space left in the first mug after you pulled them.

Over-Extraction

I'm not going to address that here however, there is yet another layer to all this. All I'll say here is that we'll move on to coffee. Coffee, like your barley, wheat etc, only has so much "goodness" in it. Go to a coffee shop and imagine you have just ordered an espresso/flat white/cappucino but the barista simply left the (can't remember the name of the damn thing) "filter with the handle thing" in the machine and pressed the water button. You would be getting the second runnings of the coffee which has no goodness left. In fact, it is much worse as not only has all the goodness gone into the customer's cup before you, only bad stuff remains and there is plenty of it.

I could write more but I think I'm done for today on this one
PP

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My internet keeps going on strike but enjoyed reading your post the other day on my phone especially the, "amount of beers drunk during the process and other factors that I'm not going to mention..." comment. It's always amazing how at the beginning of a brew day, you can always find your thermometer, hydrometer and other bits and pieces, but, as the day progresses (amount of beers consumed), they seem to gradually disappear . And, when you find the bit you were looking for, then you have to remember where you put your beer before you went looking for the gadget. It's a very vicious circle .

Looking forward to hearing how the second batch went.

Just looking at your file from the post above and, as you say, lots of measurements missing. In fact, the only one I see is in Section O where your actual OG is 1.034 versus an expected 1.058. That's a very big discrepancy and worries me especially if the same thing happened on the second day. Have you any ideas on what caused that discrepancy? Hopefully the 1.034 is just a typo?

Pat

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Hello Pinchons, I just re-reviewed your comments and have one thing that could help a little...

A tip to keep “consistent” fermentation temperature is to fill a clean garbage can with water and put your fermenter in it. (Obviously don’t go so full with water to risk it contaminating wort in your fermenter...). Doing this moderates the temperature the wort inside the fermenter and keeps temperature more consistent. It reduces swings in fermentation temperature, which is a very good thing for making good quality beer.

I now have a temperature controlled fermentation chamber, but this was one of my first steps, learned from a pro brewer for what their brewery does with smaller test batches. If my fermentation chamber is in use I still use the garbage can method to moderate fermentation temperatures.

Thank you all for the tips, very interesting the garbage can method. We´ll consider it for the future.

See uploaded the last brewing Biabacus. Regarding The OG gravity discrepancies of the first one, it wasn't a TYPO, its what we got, but the target 1058 was given to us by the recipe, which wasn't according to our method, on that batch we added water to the boil.

On our next batch, the one I'm uploading, we reached an OG of 1044, so that means it went better. On this one we sparged with 8l.

So, another funny story, we got together today to brew a new batch of the belgian session, trading the Tettnager Hop for a Saaz Hop (What do you think about this change? it was recommended to us) and we forgot the yeast, so we'll be brewing our 10th batch next week.

Let´s hope we get to mark on our pot the litres with lines and we can measure all the data that is missing.

Thank you guys

Cheers

BIABacus PR1.3U - Belgian Saison - 8l Sparging.xls

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Hello [mention]Pinchons[/mention] - One more add-on to “the garbage can method” to control fermentation temperature. If you live in a place where it gets cold in winter time, brewing in garage and brewing an ale, can keep water warmer with a submersible fish tank heater. That’s what I did.

Disclaimer. I have not yet brewed BiAB or any all grain or partial mash. I've only ever done extract kits and steeping. Please forgive my inexperience. So I took my first crack at the BIABacus. I took exploringamigo's 3 gallon conversion of a pilsner to see how it would convert to my equipment for a mini BIAB. His recipe notes follow, a link to his post on this site is credited in my attached BiaBacus file.
I had to tweak numbers to fit this recipe into my equipment and ended up with a 2.5 gallon VIP if I shortened the boil to 60 minutes and sparged a half gallon. Otherwise I was exceeding the capacity of my kettle for the mash and coming really close on the boil. Lowering my target gravity barely affected my TWN so I left it as per recipe. Im not fully clear on Biabacus and calculated volumes: the mash volume is SWN + grain bill or total water volume only (excluding grain displacement)?

Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold the mash at
154 °F (68 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete. Infuse the mash with near boiling water while stirring or with a recirculating mash system raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.044 (10.9 °P).

The total wort boil time is 90 minutes, which helps reduce the SMM (S-methyl methionine) present in the lightly-kilned Pilsner malt and results in less DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide) in the finished beer. Add the first hop addition with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. The other hop additions are at 30, 10, and zero minutes left in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes left in the boil.

Chill the wort to 50 °F (10 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is 20 grams of properly rehydrated dry yeast, four packages of liquid yeast or one package of liquid yeast in a
9-liter starter"

I plan on lagering in a 5 gallon carboy as it's the smallest vessel I have that will fit 2.5 gallons. I know it's not ideal but my thought was to move during diacetyl rest in the hopes that a protective blanket of CO2 would at least partially displace any oxygen in the excessive headspace. I'm open to other suggestions, such as bottling before lagering?
Anyway sorry for the novel. Thanks in advance for any help!

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Good job filling out the BIABacus and giving it a shot! I think a lot of things will come out at you after you do. And there are lots of terminologies and whatnot listed. Clear Brewing Terminology (CBT), there is a post on the forum in the beginner's section and I recommend reviewing. It was a help to me.

I haven't used the small equipment and done some of the things you are discussing with sparging and whatnot. With a quick review, how you filled the form looks pretty good. One thing that I didn't do the first time I used the BIABacus but do all the time now (and is a big help) is fill out sections L, M, N, O, Q, R, etc. Basically these are "Check Points". If something is going south on you, often it will be obvious by reviewing these. (Example: too much evaporation, too high or too low a gravity reading, etc.). If you are using other ingredients (i.e. Whirlfloc, Irish Moss, etc.), ought to add them to the F. Miscellaneous section.

As far as the recipe is concerned, might be a little concerned about the boil being cut down to 60 minutes. Some say that causes more DMS in finished beer. But maybe it will be okay. I have not done that before so could not say. If this is what you have to do so there is beer remaining after the boil - give it a shot!

FYI a really good recipe book is Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer. We have good knowledge on how to scale it to your system. All of their recipes are of high quality.

Good job filling this out. Give it a shot! Let us know how it works for you and how the beer turns out.

@Dreadpiratewes - think I forgot to mention, I don’t really “lager” my lagers besides trying to let them stay at serving temperatures for up to a month or so. But not always. If I am out of German Pils, it may get tapped and start getting poured within a few days.

If you have space for it, some say a horizontal storage container at cold temperature is best. Of doing this I would be at Cold Crash temp. My opinion. But full disclosure, I have never done this... Usually my lager gets better after a few weeks in the keg...so am laggering it in place in the serving keg.

@Scott thanks for the reply! I've definitely been studying the CBT thread and think I'll retain more over time.
It will be a while til I get a chance to try this recipe but I'll let you know once I do. Once I try pure BIAB I may switch to a partial mash and top off a reduced volume boil in the fermenter for larger batches. That is until I can get a larger pot at least...

Alright, been playing round and learning with the BIABacus for a week now and have copied a Munch Helles recipe from [url][http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum ... t=25442url] . Gonna be my first BIAB too. Attached my bacus file below with all my kettle dimensions filled out. Ferment in glass carboys, I have a temp controlled freezer for lagering and gonna package into bottles.
Does my file look alright?
Thanks for the help, looking forward to this brew day!

Hmmmm.....trying to attach file...please stand by lol

[attachment=0]1543709536782_0_Munich Helles.xlsx[/assessment]

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Last edited by TurfMaster on 02 Dec 2018, 08:14, edited 2 times in total.

First off - good job on filling out the BIABacus! I do not see any problems with how you filled it out, provided that you correctly put in the dimensions of your existing boil pot, and I'm sure you did. Good job!

Helles is a really nice style, very easy to drink. I've got one on tap right now too, lightest of 5 beers on tap @ 4.5% ABV.

Fermentation:
I do have a couple tips or recommendations on your fermentation... First, I think you will want to leave it for longer than 10 days in the fermenter at regular lager fermentation temperatures... Probably at least 14 days. Second - awesome to hear you have temperature control and ability to cold crash! I cold crash @ 32 deg F / 0 deg C. If cold crashing I do not see any reason to use a secondary fermentation vessel. If brewing without temperature control, one could make an argument that a secondary helps get rid of some sediment. With cold crashing a secondary is not needed and just increases time to do the job. And being an extra "step", each handling step increases potential to get "bugs" in your beer - so I would skip the secondary.

Well lager fermentation can be up to 21 days. Seems like mine is done normally 14 days or so. Could be a couple days longer sometimes... Just make certain fermentation is 100% complete before beginning cold crash. A few days extra never hurts anything...but if fermentation is not complete it causes major problems. Check final gravity with hydrometer. 2-3 days of dacetal rest will help finish fermentation if almost done.

I normally cold crash for 2 days but no problem if you need to go longer. Then can bottle or keg directly after that.